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Daily industrial news and top headlines for plant and maintenance managers

Pilz (Canton, MI) offers safe, economical safety gate and position monitoring with the PSENmag, which provide non-contact safety switches on the input side and evaluation devices on the output side. The PSENmag switches have a compact design and rugged housing, ensuring a long product service life.

Count On Tools Inc. (Gainesville, GA) has announced that the company now manufactures Pillarhouse AP-1 universal nozzles for its entire line of selective soldering machines. The nozzles can consistently apply flux and solder to component leads without disturbing nearby SMT components.

Thermal Dynamics (St. Louis, MO) has released a new electrode (p/n 9-8232) and 120A cutting tip (p/n 9-8233) specifically-designed for the automated SL 100SV torch. In automated applications, this pair provides an increased part life and improved cut surfaces. The 1Torch performs with virtually all plasma cutting power supplies, not to mention high-frequency, CD, and touch start systems.

Retractable conveyor systems are used in many industries, but most often in food and pharmaceutical. The determining factor in the performance of these systems is speed. The sytem comprises transpositors, shuttles, dealers and reciprocators, which can be thought of as:
Dealers deal out rows of products.

I first learned about the FIRST program while traveling with one of my salesmen. We called on several companies where somewhere within the course of the meeting one of the engineers would reveal their involvement as a mentor in a group called FIRST . I realize now that these mentors during the time of the competition are extremely dedicated and devote many hours to their teams and probably think of little else.

BEIJING (AP) — China promised currency reforms Monday as it opened a high-level dialogue with Washington but said it will decide the pace and pressed for an end to U.S. curbs on high-tech exports.
President Hu Jintao made the pledge at the start of the two-day meeting, apparently trying to defuse a key irritant as officials began wide-ranging talks on financial market reforms, trade and reviving global growth.

EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — Adam Bruckner has noticed a disturbing trend during his 38 years as a University of Washington professor of aeronautics engineering.
His tests are less rigorous. His students, less prepared. Even the format of classes is changing, morphing into something that requires less manpower and smaller amounts of state money.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Nearly a mile of newly made oil-containment boom, which provides a final and desperate line of defense against an enormous slick in the Gulf of Mexico, gets trucked out of a small factory in Cape Canaveral each day.
"We're maxed out," said Sean Geary, sales manager at American Boom & Barrier Corp.

MARIETTA, Ohio (AP) — David McCullough will say a little prayer early Monday, fire up a massive gas furnace for perhaps the last time and do what he does best — produce pretty marbles.
McCullough may have to work his magic on the furnace, which has sat idle for months in Jabo Inc.'s tiny factory near Marietta.

WILLIAMSON, N.Y. (AP) — About 300 workers at a Mott's apple juice plant in western New York have gone on strike over proposed wage and benefit reductions.
The unionized hourly employees at the Mott's plant in Williamson, 20 miles east of Rochester, walked off the job Sunday after contract negotiations on Friday failed to reach an agreement.

WARREN, Mich. (AP) — He stands all day, bent over noisy machines, cutting giant sheets of steel and feeding them into monster-sized presses so powerful the concrete floor rumbles beneath his size-16 feet.
This is how Steve Prucnell builds cars. In 22 years, the parts haven't changed much.

DETROIT (AP) — Two Ford Motor Co. factories near Detroit will see 170 additional jobs in the next two years as the automaker brings battery pack and gas-electric hybrid transmission assembly to the United States.
The company said Monday it will create a "center of excellence" for electric vehicle development in the Detroit area, and it intends to add more than 50 engineers to work on the next generation of electric vehicles.

Hyde Industrial Blade Solutions (IBS, Southbridge, MA) has engineered a line of professional-grade blades, the Wavy Scallop Edge Blades, that combine the ability to cut tough materials with a longer blade life to outperform standard beveled edge blades. The new product can be used in numerous applications, such as cutting reinforced hydraulic hose or rubber belting.

A flexible, wire-reinforced Santoprene thermoplastic rubber hose from Flexaust (Warsaw, IN) is well-suited for a wide range of ventilation and light bulk handling applications, according to the manufacturer. The Flexadux TR T-6 hose is highly resistant to chemicals, moisture, UV, and abrasion, and is capable of handling toxic fumes, dust, wood chips, and similar materials.

The DustPruf family of conveyors from Dorner Manufacturing (Hartland, WI) includes the 2300 and 5300 series, and now integrates SmartSlot technology into the frame. This slot provides all the integration and add-on capabilities of a T-slot, without the inherent drawbacks of slots that collect contaminants or debris.

Thomas & Betts (Memphis, TN) has introduced a new Push-In Luminaire Disconnect that enables technicians to change ballasts safely and easily without having to trip the main power breaker. The disconnect is ideal for all fluorescent lighting applications up to 4A, 600V, and complies with 2008 NEC 4010.

Advanced Machine & Engineering Co., (AME) offers its line of Amlok® cylinder rod locks for a variety of applications in myriad industries. One recent installation is on the worker lift platforms at a major RV manufacturer in the Elkhart-Goshen, Indiana area, home to that industry’s leading producers of motor homes, fifth wheel campers, trailers, and other vehicles.

"The thought of U.S. medical device innovators investing millions of dollars on market research and product development time only to compromise the quality and intellectual property of the device by outsourcing to an offshore partner just to save a few dollars. I just don’t get it." - Chris Coghlin, President & CEO, Coghlin Companies In the latest PD&D Fireside Chat , Chris Coghlin, president and CEO of Coghlin Companies , discusses the impending limitations new taxes will cause in medical device development, ongoing medical device innovation, protecting his company against counterfeit components, the cool projects he witnesses on the plant floor everyday, and more.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Looking to a day when cars and trucks use far less gasoline or none at all, President Barack Obama plans to order the government to prepare fuel efficiency standards for many years from now and renew its focus on electric-powered vehicles.
Obama is also asking federal agencies to extend a national fuel-efficiency program to big rig and work trucks for the first time, beginning in 2014.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is poised to ask Congress to agree to $9 billion more in loan guarantees for the nuclear energy industry, a Democratic aide said Thursday, in a renewed push for nuclear power as the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlights the risks of fossil fuel production.